Pistorius Verdict - What Will It Be?

'I just want to love and be loved'

This time I’m going to start with Reeva Steenkamp, an innocent girl, who was killed by her boyfriend, who only wanted to love and be loved. I hate the way in the trial, they’re only allowed to refer to her as ‘the deceased’. This seems pretty callous and also sounds strange when they say things like ‘the deceased was sitting up in bed’. Reeva existed; she has a name; she has an identity; she’s not just the person Oscar Pistorius killed.

Gerrie Nel/Barry Roux

Again, I’m extremely disappointed by both lawyers’ lack of clarity and their failure to summarise their main arguments or present any kind of cogent, credible narrative of what they believe happened. It’s like they’re intent on incoherence. I can only hope that a better mind than mine (the judge’s I hope though so far she hasn’t shown much sign that she’s listening and I’m not sure I blame her) can see some method in their madness. Perhaps she’s hoping that the written heads of argument will make more sense.

I want Gerrie Nel to be resolute, sure, convincing. He has a good case. He only needs to state it. We need him to speak for Reeva Steenkamp because she cannot speak for herself. Instead, he rambles on his peripatetic and seemingly aimless course. I don’t need to worry about him losing momentum or focus because he never shows any. Luckily for him, Barry Roux is just as prone to an excess of the type of verbiage that actually obfuscates meaning. Oh no, I’m doing it myself now!

Reeva's parents just want the truth

First of all, why does Nel even engage with any of the nonsense brought up by Roux – whether someone moved the gun a couple of inches or not? It doesn’t matter because no one is claiming that Oscar did not use the gun to kill Reeva. His job is not to prove that the police are beyond reproach. His job is to prove that Oscar is guilty. He gives Roux’s reasoning validity by responding to it.

What he should be doing now is not nit-picking but establishing what is salient, what he wants the judge to consider. I’m not clear why Milady isn’t asking any questions. Is she even listening?

Second, he needs to leave the metaphors at home. They’re neither clever nor beneficial to his case. In fact, they’re the opposite.

To call each piece of circumstantial evidence a feather implies that individually, even collectively, they carry little weight when in fact they do; they have enormous substance.

The dropping the baton analogy concentrates on Oscar’s evidence instead of his actions on the night/morning in question and I find it somewhat insensitive considering that Reeva died so horribly. But I would argue that, if Nel considers this the baton of truth, in giving evidence, Oscar never even picked it up. Unfortunately, in Nel’s final statement, it’s he who continually drops the baton, losing his place, leaving the book he needs at home, etc. Justice is at stake here. Get it together.

As for a snowball of lies – that implies that they’re gaining power and weight. They’re not.

‘In his attempt to prevent a domino effect on the mosaic pieces’. Let’s not go there. If you need to use an analogy, stick to one, easily relatable image not three or four. Shakespeare, he ain't.

Nel’s statement: ‘He has disqualified himself from his version being accepted by the court’ is a weak one. He killed her. Nel needs to emphasise this.

Third, the baker’s dozen. I’m at a loss as to why he settles on this particular set of points to highlight although it’s not a bad policy to point out a few flaws in the defence case (there are so many to choose from), such as the pledge that a witness would testify that Oscar screams like a woman so neighbours could have mistaken his screams for those of Reeva Steenkamp. The defence called a witness (note that it was a female not a male witness) to record an imitation of the scream they had heard but never played the recording in court. Nel is right to conclude that the only explanation must be that ‘it doesn't advance their case’. Roux still contends, somewhat pointlessly, that: ‘It’s not a female screaming. It’s a male in a high-pitched voice’. Even Oscar can't replicate it. Give it up now, Barry.

Oscar Pistorius

But Nel makes his point or rather fails to make it because he’s completely unable to express himself clearly. He says of the screams:‘He had to stop because she was dead’ and could no longer scream. But he’s implied here that Oscar ‘was’ screaming. He wasn’t and Nel doesn’t think he was but the fault is in how he’s put it. It was always Reeva and it was her who stopped when she was no longer able to.

Don’t forget this either: ‘The deceased was fully clothed when she was shot’. How did she manage to get dressed without Oscar noticing? And why did she get dressed and take her phone to the toilet?

Nel: ‘Equally devastating is the vagueness of his version as to how and when the police would have tampered with the scene.’ But who cares at this stage? It wasn’t relevant in the first place.

He does make this point though. In the unlikely event that your partner believes you are an intruder and he pursues you to the toilet with a gun, first shouting then silent, is it likely that you will stay completely quiet and not ask him not to shoot you? Why wouldn't Reeva have called out?

But at least the judge will be able to read through the whole thing at her leisure and see that there is a case there.

As for Roux, here’s his attempt to describe what happened. Apologies for the poor grammar – they’re his words, not mine.

‘Now you standing at the door. You vulnerable. You have the effect of the slow-burn over many years. You’re anxious. You’re trained as an athlete to react to sound.’

Sister: To run.

Me: Yeah – not to shoot and kill.

Trained to react to sound - to run not shoot

It is worth considering why everybody else in the same situation, including Oscar himself, would ask their partner whether they had heard anything. Sam Taylor confirmed that Oscar ‘went as far as waking her up on more than one occasion to ask her if she had heard something’. Why didn’t he do this with Reeva?

I don’t buy the ‘slow-burn’ theory or the domestic abuse line. I don't think the judge does either. Victims of long-term abuse sometimes do snap and attack someone but usually their abuser, not their innocent girlfriend. Of course Roux wants us to believe that Oscar thought there was an intruder, a threat although we know that there was no real break-in, no actual danger.

Layout of the upstairs

Again, I have to ask if Oscar would really feel that threatened by an intruder who broke in and then locked themselves in the toilet while he was standing outside the door holding a gun loaded with Black Talon ammunition. Come on.

Oscar: 'I felt trapped, as my bedroom door was locked and I have limited mobility on my stumps.' Who locked the bedroom door? Him. Who had the key to the door? Him. How exactly is he trapped?

Roux asks: ‘Why would he call for help for her if he’d just tried to kill her?’

Oh Barry, don’t be so disingenuous. What else could he do? If he didn’t call for help, how would this fit with his ‘story’ that it was an ‘accident’? Of course he had to call for help. But notice that he didn’t do this earlier when, by his own admission: ‘She was struggling to breathe’ and ‘I sat over Reeva and I cried’/'I don't know how long I was there for’ (as I said in my previous blog – presumably until she was no longer breathing and couldn’t implicate him). He only called for help after he was absolutely certain that she was dead. She was his girlfriend so he has to act upset. But it might not even have been acting. He could easily have experienced immediate remorse for his reckless actions. It doesn’t mean that he didn’t deliberately kill her.

But even when he finally decided to call for help …

Mr Pieter Baba

Stop a minute here and reflect that this was after Mr Baba (presumably not a friend of Oscar’s) had seen there were lights on and rung to ask if everything was ok and he had answered (having shot Reeva or the imagined intruder) ‘Alles ist ok’.

Why? He’d just shot someone. How could it all be ok?

Why would he need to delay calling for help – if it really had been a terrible accident? He would only do this to stage a scene or cover up a crime.

Then the crucial question is: Who did he eventually decide to call? Emergency services? No – he called his friend, the estate manager, Johan Stander. Why did he call his friend and not emergency services? And why isn't this in Nel's baker's dozen?

Then, from my previous blog: Why didn’t Stander call emergency services as soon as he learned Reeva had been shot?

Because Oscar and he must have decided they needed to initiate damage control. I like to think that by this stage Reeva was dead rather than lying there dying as they pondered what to do to save Oscar’s neck.

 

But why oh why did no one ask Stander why he chose not to call for help?

These can only be a series of stalling tactics to ensure that there was no possibility of Reeva being revived and to remove any evidence that could damn Oscar. Phones were taken and messages wiped.

It's a hard rain's a gonna fall

Roux asks why Nel didn’t chase up Oscar’s father to question him on the ammunition in the safe. But Nel could have easily asked Roux the same thing. Pistorius senior could have corroborated Oscar’s story but he wasn’t asked so didn’t. And why weren’t the policemen from the altercation in the car or Martyn Rooney from the incident in the restaurant called?

Roux makes a big deal about a tiny point, again supremely poorly expressed:

‘After the lunch adjournment, he was then in a position to increase the emotion.'
What he means is that the witness in question altered the emphasis of his testimony a little. The fact that he’s harping on about these tiny details shows that his case is weak. Unlike Nel though, he doesn’t have much choice.

Roux states that Nel’s case is based on the couple going down to eat together later. That isn’t so. Nel has only said that Reeva ate later; no one has said they delayed eating their meal. Roux’s point: ‘It does not explain common sense’.

Again, he fails to express himself. He means he doesn’t think this is common sense. We don’t need to explain common sense.

Roux mentions: ‘an adjustment disorder that developed after the alleged incident’.

It’s not an alleged incident. No one can dispute that there was an actual incident. Does he mean an alleged adjustment disorder?

On the bedside table

Roux: ‘Led to an exaggerated fight response … he decided to fire indiscriminately’.

Interesting how he gets this in and the judge doesn’t call him on it. Is she in a coma? When did the shot grouping become ‘indiscriminate’? Evidence proved exactly the opposite.

Roux says Oscar ‘felt very much on the backfoot, relying on his disability’. Since when was he relying on his disability? Is this a Freudian slip perhaps? Does Roux mean that the defence case is now dependent on Oscar’s disability?

Roux: ‘Did he foresee the possibility that the deceased was in the toilet?’

No – he always knew she was in the toilet.

 

'The question is whether the accused foresaw that Reeva Steenkamp was in the lavatory when he shot, and whether he had reconciled himself with that before shooting (i.e. if he did foresee it as possibly the case, did he simply not care and shoot anyway?).' That’s only the question if you believe the whole intruder line. He's trying to lead the judge here. Away from the truth.

Toilet door

‘Would it be wrong to arm himself?’ 

If you’re credulous enough to believe Oscar was defending himself against an intruder, you might think it was justifiable that he armed himself BUT then to shoot them four times through a locked door, was that justifiable?

'The striking of the door by a cricket bat would not be as loud’

But that’s exactly what Roux tried to prove. That the witnesses who thought they heard shots had heard the cricket bat instead.

It appears that Oscar is going to change his plea on the other charges. Roux states that Oscar admitted in testimony that he was partly culpable. He didn’t. He said sorry to the restaurant owners, offered to pay for the damage but he said that his only error was to take the gun believing that Darren Fresco had made it safe, i.e. It was Darren’s fault but Oscar was man enough to offer reparation.

Also seems as if they've given up on the GAD angle.

Then he keeps talking about objective facts. What’s an objective fact? Facts don't have opinions. Does he mean undisputed fact?

Alex Crawford: objectivity out the window

Next a brief word on Alex Crawford who once again seems somewhat biased in her reporting, rather pro-Oscar. Of Oscar’s yawning throughout, she lets us know that people (those experts she relies on, i.e. the general public) have Tweeted her to say that yawning is sometimes a reaction to stress. This is what she chooses to convey. It’s also a sign of lack of interest or tiredness but as always Crawford wants Oscar to have the benefit of the doubt. Then she mentions that Arnold Pistorius (no relation – oh hang on, yes he is a relation, Oscar’s uncle) has said to the reporters he’s so friendly with that Nel can't have it both ways with his defence. Hmm. He’s totally objective of course. She comments that Roux is ‘in fine form’ and describes his summation as ‘a weighty tomb’. She meant ‘tome’. Conveys that her mate, Uncle Arnold says of Roux, that ‘he’s done more than enough’.

Here’s a Tweet from her: 'Roux disproving fairly convincingly some of the neighbours recollection of emerg calls, timings and who spoke when …'.

Again, this is her opinion, almost always pro-defence. I don't think Roux did anything convincingly.

What does the judge make of all this? She has to show impartiality of course during the course of the trial and can't display emotion. But which way is she leaning?

Judge Masipa - late for lunch?

'Judge Masipa has shown she is determined to complete the closing arguments by the end of today, telling Gerrie Nel to hasten his case yesterday, calling for a limited lunch break and ordering the court to stay later into the afternoon than at any other point during the trial.' 

Judge Masipa: ‘Unless, of course, you want to work on a Saturday and perhaps Sunday after church’.

Personally, I don’t care. It’ll take as long as it takes. Hmm. Her main worry now seems to be getting things done quickly rather than asking questions or making sure of facts. I don't think this case should be rushed. I don’t understand why they had to put a time limit on it at all. Her life has been lost and his future is at stake. It’s important. I wish that this wasn’t her primary concern, that she had shown as much interest in the arguments and the evidence.

Barry Roux says if Judge Masipa believes Oscar Pistorius meant to kill Reeva Steenkamp then she 'can take a red pen' and draw a line through his entire argument. Someone make sure she has a red pen.

Let’s not lose sight of this. One fact is not in dispute. Oscar Pistorius shot and killed Reeva Steenkamp. The only thing at issue is whether he knew it was her he was shooting at. Whatever, he deliberately shot and killed someone, someone so dangerous that they had locked themselves in the toilet.

We don't know whether the shots were fired rapidly or not. Either way, Oscar is in trouble. If he shot quickfire, he meant to kill whoever was behind the door. If there was a break between shots, he would have heard Reeva’s screaming and therefore known it was her before he went on to fire more shots. Each scenario indicates an intent to kill.

The commentators are saying that the judge only has to believe that one factor in the police investigation was flawed for this to cast a reasonable doubt over Oscar’s guilt but as I stated in another blog, this is not relevant to whether or not he shot and killed Reeva (we know he did this even if he is reluctant to admit culpability; he is not attempting to deny this) and has no bearing on his intent.

The judge is due to deliver her verdict on 11 September 2014. It has to be one of these three. Let's hope that she gets to the right one.

'Only God will judge me' (Reeva Steenkamp)

Oscar Pistorius: ‘I don’t remember what I’ve forgotten’

Oscar Pistorius

My first blog on the Pistorius trial, Who Put the Story in Pistorius? is here.

At this stage in the trial, we’re still left with more questions than answers. I pose some of these unanswered (and sometimes unasked) questions below. And I use quotes from the trial to try to investigate what’s really going on, what's really being said.

As Gerrie Nel has asked in many different ways: Why are there so many inconsistencies between what Oscar’s saying now and his bail application?

Oscar: ‘At certain times I didn’t feel I was in the wrong’/'Certain times I thought she was in the wrong’

Even when Oscar is trying to be even-handed about their disagreements, he still slips up and says that he wasn't in the wrong sometimes and Reeva was in the wrong sometimes. In other words, he was never wrong.

He won't ever admit that he lied, that he is telling a story. So he uses the word ‘whisper’ then denies he did even when it’s there in the trial transcript. (It’s a minor point to us but major to him because he believes a ‘soft tone’ would not require an answer but a whisper would – I’m not sure why.) He remains adamant. This tells us a lot about him. That he can lie and still swear he’s telling the truth to the court (remember he’s under oath for the duration of his testimony) over something so apparently insignificant might lead us to believe that he’s quite prepared to do the same on the bigger questions he’s asked.

If he ever owns to a fault, it’s always for something minor and he still manages to shift the real blame onto someone else. For instance, in the incident in the restaurant, his only error was to take a gun from a friend believing the friend would have ensured it was safe. In other words, it was the friend’s fault.

Reeva and Oscar

Misinformation 1

‘His alarm system wasn’t working properly’

This is an example of how lazy reporting can affect the actual content of the news. One Sky report actually began, rather misleadingly, with the words ‘His alarm system wasn’t working properly’ but this has never been established. It’s Oscar’s story that the last time painting was done, some sensors were removed temporarily but we have no evidence that this happened this time and only Oscar's word for it that he was worried – it’s just something the defence has brought up to support the intruder theory. So with the ladder. There was no ladder. How about Oscar’s dogs? Where were they? You would think that they’d bark if there was an intruder, if Reeva was screaming or when Oscar started shooting.

Misinformation 2

Alex Crawford about a witness: ‘She realised her balcony doors were open and she wanted to close them because there had been security concern among them’.

The witness actually said that said that she usually had these doors open ‘in the summer’ and closed the doors that particular night to stop her dogs getting out onto the balcony. Only after hearing someone calling for help did she worry about any danger to herself. Do you see what’s happened here? Alex Crawford has backed up the ‘story’, the perception that the estate was somehow unsafe, that Oscar was right to grab a gun.

Misinformation 3

Jeremy Thompson: ‘Oscar … described the moment when he discovered he’d shot and killed his girlfriend’

This statement unwittingly implies his innocence. He should have said Oscar ‘described the moment when he claims he discovered he’d shot and killed his girlfriend’.

Oscar: ‘I don’t remember what I’ve forgotten’

This sounds obvious but is in fact about what Oscar claims to have remembered and forgotten and not funny at all. He appears to have a particularly virulent case of selective amnesia. On the one hand, he’s a stickler for accuracy and can come across as pedantic when he continually corrects Nel and I wish the latter had capitalised on this more – at first I thought he was, by making deliberate, silly mistakes just to see if Oscar would pick up on them, which he inevitably did but Nel doesn't ask how Oscar can have such perfect, detailed recall of some things and be so incredibly vague about others.

Oscar needs to listen to Judge Judy (Sheindlin): 'If you tell the truth, you don't have to have a good memory.'

Oscar and Martyn Rooney

Why is it that Oscar can remember certain details of the time when he was shot at on the road, where he turned off, parked etc. but not who he called to pick him up when he was too scared to drive himself? If this had really happened, wouldn’t the defence have appealed to that person to come forward?

How is it that all the corroborating witnesses to the other gun charges back each other up on the basics and only Oscar remembers them differently? Why would Sam Taylor and Darren Fresco lie? The only other witness is Martyn Rooney. Will he be asked to testify?

‘Nothing was normal about that night’

This is Oscar’s fallback position when his ‘story’ doesn’t make sense. Every time it’s put to him that his behaviour isn’t rational or normal, he says this and it’s hard to dispute.

TMI

Alex Crawford: ‘Oscar’ was ‘clearly so tired. He didn’t sleep last night. When they did adjourn, he sat down on the floor of the dock and he was just sobbing and his family all surrounded him’ with a psychologist described as ‘trying to comfort him as a mother would a child’. Talk about editorialising.

This portrays Oscar as the helpless, blameless, tortured victim of circumstance, someone we should have sympathy with. And happens to be exactly the image he wants to convey.

Crime scene

The night of ‘the accident’ (as Oscar likes to call it, or occasionally ‘incident’)

The bedroom

Was the bedroom door still locked? Where was the key? Could Reeva even get out of the bedroom or was escape to the bathroom her only option?

When Oscar claims he heard a noise, why didn’t he ask Reeva whether she heard it too? 

Maybe it's just me but I'm sure I would have said to my partner 'Did you hear that?'

Why wasn’t he bothered by the fact that she never replied to him even though he’s sure she was awake?

Plan of bedroom/bathroom

The bathroom

If we assume that there were no sounds of a break-in and we can assume that since there was no break-in, why did Oscar arm himself? Well, Oscar claims he heard a noise but he has to say that otherwise there's no reason to do any of it.

Then, as there was no intruder, how did witnesses hear a woman’s bloodcurdling screams? Because Reeva was terrified for her life, so terrified that she ran and locked herself in the toilet with her cellphone. I’m not sure whether they have shown the results of the voice tests yet as I only see what they show on the TV. They've recently had witnesses (friends of Oscar's - see how easy it is to make an inference?) claim that they heard a high-pitched male voice cry out. Interestingly, they only asked the female witness to replicate this, not the male one. And why was Oscar never asked to do this? Then, I’m convinced that these defence witnesses probably did hear Oscar but this was after he’d shot Reeva, after he’d supposedly ‘discovered’ this and run back to the balcony to call for help. Nel needs to establish the exact timing.

Why would an intruder break in, then lock themselves in the toilet? They wouldn’t.

If an intruder did break in only to lock themselves in the toilet, would you be scared of them? How much of a danger could they pose? Especially if you’re the one with the weapon.

Why didn’t Oscar fire a warning shot? He had the presence of mind to consider the possibility of a ricochet hurting him, but not to fire a warning shot.

Why did Reeva not tell Oscar where she was when he came into the bathroom shouting with a gun?

Oscar: ‘That’s where the firearm was pointed’ (removes himself from the equation)

This is said as if he had no control over the gun. He was pointing it at the door.

Why did Reeva take her cellphone and lock herself into the toilet?

Detective Botha

Detective Botha: ‘If the shots were fired in rapid sequence ... I think it's highly unlikely that she would have been able to call out'

We don't know whether the shots were fired rapidly or not. Either way, Oscar is in trouble. If he shot quickfire, he meant to kill whoever was behind the door. If there was a break between shots, he would have heard Reeva’s screaming and therefore known it was her before he went on to fire more shots. Either way you could say there was intent to kill.

Oscar: ‘If that was after the first shooting’

This implies there was a gap between the shots, time for him to stop and think, make a decision, hear Reeva scream.

Why did the defence introduce the double-tap theory if they were going to discount it later? Because they thought it would help their case then realised it didn’t.

Why have they changed their position on Reeva’s screams? First, they claimed Oscar wouldn’t be able to hear them because his ears were ringing from firing the gun. Now they seem to be saying that the shots were so quickfire that Reeva would not have had time to scream. The story keeps changing.

Two-handed grip

How did Oscar fire four shots with the resulting bullet holes so close together? He claims he fired one-handed but the result suggests  a two-handed grip. With the former, you’d expect the bullet holes to be more scattered.

It seems from his own testimony that as soon as he went back into the bedroom, Oscar realised he had shot Reeva so why didn’t he call for an ambulance at this stage?

Oscar: ‘I sat over Reeva and I cried’/I don't know how long I was there for’

Presumably until she was no longer breathing and couldn’t implicate him.

So, in fact, I have three questions here. 1 Why did Oscar call Johan Stander (who he called 'uncle' so this implies they were pretty close) rather than emergency services? 2 When he rang Stander instead, why didn’t Stander call emergency services as soon as he learned Reeva had been shot? (This makes me think they had to get together to initiate a cover-up or begin damage control.) And 3 Why didn’t Nel ask Stander question 2? It seems to me that Nel is being distracted by detail a little and is not seeing the wood for the trees but it might be that he did ask this and it just wasn't shown on TV. I hope so.

Reasonable doubt

The commentators are saying that the judge only has to believe that one factor in the police investigation was flawed for this to cast a reasonable doubt over Oscar’s guilt but this is not relevant to whether or not he shot and killed Reeva (we know he did this even if he is reluctant to admit culpability; he is not attempting to deny this) and has no bearing on his intent. Whether the police moved a gun or a cricket bat an inch or so is of no matter to the question of guilt. I’m worried that the judge will drown in the sea of red herrings Roux has created – his tactic. I hope that Nel will make it clear what can safely, with impunity, be disregarded when he comes to his summing up.

Llewellyn Curlewis

Llewellyn Curlewis, Sky’s legal expert: ‘It clearly creates a possible mitigating argument regarding remorse … . After so many emotional outbursts, any human being - including the judge - might accept he was remorseful for what transpired’.

I don’t see what this has to do with whether he’s innocent or guilty. Remorse might indicate guilt but I don't think we can automatically assume that he’s upset because he’s remorseful although I’d like to believe that was the reason. It could well be that he’s upset about the very difficult situation he now finds himself in. And I’m sure he regrets the fact that he was responsible for Reeva’s death and feels grief for her but this doesn’t mean that he didn’t intend to kill her. I don't see how his remorse could have any influence on the judge's verdict. Maybe on sentencing.

Incidental

Oscar says that the weapon and ammunition are favoured by trail walkers in N. America as if it were common there. I’ve walked tons of trails in N. America and never even thought about taking a gun and I’ve never seen anyone else carrying one.

Is anyone else surprised by what is deemed as ‘evidence of an argument’ between Oscar and Reeva – blood and bullet holes? When I have an argument, the evidence might be an awkward silence or maybe a slammed door, not blood and bullet holes. I’d say it was a pretty major understatement to call this an argument.

Roger Dixon: ‘The instruments I used were my eyes’

I think the hapless Roger Dixon has been systematically dismantled as an ‘inexpert’ witness so will say no more except to highlight his quote above. A moment of light relief. It seems to me that he was trying to tell the truth, without realising that this would prejudice the defence case.

What we see is all filtered through the TV so the programme makers have a responsibility. It’s a matter of perception. If the presenters and experts perceive or choose to perceive a day in court a certain way, this is how it’s relayed to the public. Luckily, the judge will not be affected by any misrepresentation in the press.

Crime of passion

I think, like Sky’s legal expert, that Roux and Pistorius would have done much better to go for the crime of passion defence. Then, all Oscar’s previous reckless incidents with guns could actually be used to back up their case. They would reinforce that he was a trigger-happy hot-head who rushed headlong into trouble rather than trying to avoid it. With this in mind, they would do well to support the prosecution’s stand that he was so easily spooked that he was liable to go into ‘Code Red’ or combat mode over the noise of a washer-dryer.

So what really happened? I think that Oscar was annoyed that Reeva had met up with her ex a couple of days before Valentine’s Day. Maybe he discerned that she’d discussed their relationship with him. From all accounts, he was insecure, prone to jealousy, controlling and likely to fly off the handle. Perhaps she lost her desire to continually placate him, evident in texts like this ‘Please let me know when I can talk to you’ and decided at some point during the course of the night that their relationship would not work. Maybe this all built up into a terrible argument. As he admits, Reeva was not afraid to stand up for herself. But she didn’t expect that their quarrel would turn violent. I think he chased her in an uncontrollable rage.

What astounds me is that Oscar Pistorius wants to come out of this as a misguided hero who loved his girlfriend and only wanted to protect her from harm. And what might astound me more is that he might just get away with it.

You have to ask yourself why no one else’s version of events matches Oscar’s. And the answer could be that his is a completely manufactured scenario.

Reeva Steenkamp - Rest in Peace

Oscar’s neighbour on meeting Reeva Steenkamp for the first time: ‘I raised my hand to greet her and she just opened her arms’

Here's the full quote: ‘The thing that really struck me about her and I don't think I’ll ever forget that moment. I raised my hand to greet her and she just opened her arms. She just came and hugged me.’

I don't think I need to add anything to this – it’s a simple testament to how warm and open she was.

Who Put the ‘Story’ in Pistorius? – My Thoughts on the Oscar Pistorius Trial

Reeva and Oscar in happier times

My secong blog on this is here.

Trial by TV

The initial coverage of the Oscar Pistorius trial has left me rather frustrated. The BBC promised to show live coverage and I assumed this would be available on the Red Button whenever the trial was in progress. As it is, they covered a bit of day one then did a few brief reports before abandoning it altogether in the second week.

Sky News has shown a little more willing and at least supplies a summary programme each day and a catch-up at weekends. Now that Pistorius is on the stand, we’re getting full live coverage at last. However, there’s nothing like objective reporting and this is nothing like objective reporting. In my opinion, it’s been biased in favour of Pistorius, in particular the commentary and conclusions of Alex Crawford, the Special Correspondent.

Crawford admits that the Pistorius family has been very friendly to the press, offering them water and so forth and she happily relates statistics told her by Pistorius’s uncle. This doesn’t bode well for honest or impartial observation. She talks about the ‘terrible tragedy’ that has kept these two families (the Pistoriuses and the Steenkamps) apart as if it were an act of God, a tsunami, not an action by a member of one of the families. We can draw the conclusion that Reeva’s mother, June, has not been as chatty to the press but has instead remained detached and dignified. For this show of strength, she’s been described in the media as ‘unmoved’ – I’ve seen her cry but she’s bowed her head and tried to hide it. Even when Crawford calls her ‘stoic’, it’s in a tone of slight disapproval. She seems to expect Mrs Steenkamp to feel pity for Oscar. Why would a mother waste tears on the person who she believes killed her daughter in cold blood?

Alex Crawford, Sky News

Crawford is very anxious about how much more Oscar can take, and obviously feels a lot of sympathy for him, constantly stressing how traumatic hearing the details of what he’s done is, how he’s ‘very pale, very white, ashen’ and how it must be terrible for his family to see him so upset. How does she think Reeva Steenkamp’s family feels? They’re only ever mentioned as an afterthought, if at all. At no point does she consider that Oscar’s tears and the retching might be put on or that if real they might be as much for himself as they are for Reeva. This can't be countenanced.

Instead Crawford inserts facts learnt from the family into the news feed, such as, the uncle’s opinion that Pistorius will never get over this. Neither will Reeva. She says, of Oscar, ‘he and his sister have been reading books … they’ve been very religious books’, that they’ve been having ‘Bible readings at their house’. This is all designed to sway the viewer into thinking that the family is a religious one (not relevant to the case), along with the aforementioned statistic, delivered to her by Uncle Arnold, that the prosecution has only used 0.7% of the text messages to build its case. I’m not saying that this is untrue. I’m sure it probably is but shouldn’t a journalist consider the reliability of the source? I wish that she would spend just 0.7% of the time she spends angsting over Oscar's suffering, reflecting on Reeva's.

Not content with seeing things only from the defence point of view, Crawford also brings to the fore opinions she’s had Tweeted to her about prosecution witnesses – someone Tweeted her to say they thought the state’s ballistics expert was arrogant. First of all, we don't know who this person was and theirs is just a random opinion so why should it be presented on air as an addendum to the expert panel section? Then, if you saw this witness, he was clear, sure and articulate, and at no time appeared arrogant. He didn’t break down under cross – is that arrogance?

After all, one fact is not in dispute. Oscar Pistorius shot and killed Reeva Steenkamp. The only things at issue are whether it was deliberate or not, whether he knew it was her he was shooting at. Even if he really believed that a dangerous intruder would break in and lock himself in the toilet, is he within his rights to shoot and kill said intruder?

Barry Roux

The Defence – Barry Roux

Much is made of Barry Roux’s ‘grandstanding’ (Sky’s term not mine) as if it were effective; of him ‘practising his art’. Alex Crawford relays to viewers that he’s ‘shredded the prosecution’s case’ when all he’s done all day is split hairs and introduce red herrings, raise points that are immaterial to the matter at hand. But no one ever questions relevance or redirects. His objective seems to be to confuse the issue, cast doubt over minor details when it really doesn’t matter whether Pistorius’s ex-girlfriend thought he took his phone to bed with him often or every night. And Sky seems to be complicit in this, Alex Crawford often refusing to recognise the crucial evidence of the day and cutting off the ‘experts’ when they start to make a good point.

Roux badgers witnesses (which I’m sure wouldn't be allowed in an English court) and the press seem to then think that he’s broken them down when time after time, their testimony has proved consistent under cross-examination. If they’ve faltered, it’s only out of frustration and boredom as they have to repeat what they’ve said yet again because it still doesn’t match Oscar’s version.

It’s Roux’s cross that has proven inconsistent, for instance, when he purports that a neighbour would not have been able to hear shots from Pistorius’s house and then suggests to the woman’s husband that some of the sounds he heard were Pistorius trying to break the toilet door down with a cricket bat. I’m sorry – if he contends that she couldn’t hear gunfire, how does he think that her husband could have heard a cricket bat hitting a door? The reporters still insist that he’s destroyed the prosecution’s case.

Often, Roux has called upon opinions from witnesses, along the lines of ‘what did they think Pistorius was feeling’, etc.? In a British court, I’d like to think these would be rejected as conjecture, that the state would raise an objection but this never happens. He even asks the same ex-girlfriend to tell him which side of the bed Oscar would have been on when he was with Reeva. How would she know? She can only speculate.

Gerrie Nel

The Prosecution – Gerrie Nel

As far as I can tell, the prosecutor, Gerrie Nel, hasn’t prepared a proper case, constructed a narrative of events or even a proper opening statement. Instead, his witnesses and questions have hopped back and forth between the different charges. I'm not sure why he's even added these - they show Pistorius's propensity for recklessness but here they simply divert attention from the killing of Reeva. At no point has he put the case as he sees it.

Now it’s moved to the defence and the cross-examination of Oscar Pistorius, it seems that the prosecutor is simply raising minor discrepancies rather than making a point, and badgering the witness, just like Roux before him. The real questions are not being asked by either attorney and the question I want to ask is why.

e.g. Why is Nel concentrating on whether Pistorius went onto the balcony or not when he has said he spoke to Reeva before he moved the fan? If he talked to her at this stage, why didn’t he address her when, in the next instant, he claims he heard a noise? Why didn’t he say ‘Did you hear that?’ In fact, a day or so later, he does finally ask this question although by then the impetus and import are lost.

Nel keeps saying that Oscar is ‘tailoring’ his evidence. What he means is that he’s embellishing it (furnishing extra details) as the case progresses. On the bail application, he heard a noise from the bathroom, by the time of the plea statement this has become the sound of a window closing and by the time he gives evidence it’s a window sliding and hitting the frame.

This seems to be a mere muddying of the waters but while he’s doing this, the case is merely treading water and not going anywhere. If we assume that he is going to come to a point somewhere down the line, the problem might be that the judge will have completely forgotten it all by then as she already seems to have trouble keeping track of who they’re talking about.

Oscar Pistorius

The Accused – Oscar Pistorius

Pistorius continually refers to ‘the accident’ that ‘happened’, or calls the killing of Reeva a ‘mistake’. A ‘mistake’ would be putting too much salt on his food; killing someone is more than a mistake. Talk about a gift for understatement. Gerrie Nel at least is rightly calling him on this, asking whether the gun went off accidentally. There’s another incident later when Oscar is asked which Valentine’s Day Reeva’s card was for and he says ‘the day when the accident happened’. He could at least acknowledge that he killed her.

But Nel hasn’t pulled him up on these two contradictory statements:1 ‘I had many thoughts’ and 2 ‘I didn’t have time to think’.

Which is it? Or these two: 1 ‘She wasn’t breathing’ as he found Reeva in the toilet and 2 ‘She was struggling to breathe’. So this means she was still alive so why didn’t he try to get help at this point? Did he wait for her to die?

Oscar has also said ‘I kneeled down’ when he was shooting. Is this a good idea when he’s on his stumps? Can he balance? I think Nel should have followed this up.

Oscar says things like ‘That’s where the firearm was pointed’ as if he had no agency in this, as if it did this by itself. Or ‘I was responsible for the firearm when the round went off’ but claims that although no one else touched it, he didn’t pull the trigger. He continually distances himself from his own actions.

What is being painted, in a pointillist style, bit by bit, piecemeal, is a portrait of a man who likes to control things, who does not relinquish control easily but still refuses to take responsibility for his actions. He won't avoid a confrontation, is not the sort to go ‘cowering and running away’. It seems impossible that he really wants to somehow come out of this a hero. However, Nel’s constant darting about between dates and incidents is as confusing for the viewer (and maybe the judge) as it is for Oscar. One minute, we’re talking about the alarm system in the house, the next about an incident in which Pistorius claims he was shot at while he was driving. I don't think this approach is helpful to anyone and may even elicit more sympathy for the accused.

The Texts

What the texts tend to illustrate is that Reeva was often unhappy with their relationship, that she might raise this but was usually conciliatory, constantly reassuring Oscar, expressing her love for him, apologising to him, defending herself, sometimes pre-emptively. His responses (he didn’t always respond) might offer an apology but inevitably follow this with an explanation that blamed her for his action in some way. It’s a type of semi-abusive behaviour that I’ve observed in my own family. Oscar has said Reeva was a strong person who would stick up for herself but his actions (criticising her in public) and the texts that resulted were a means of subtly undermining her confidence, of making her feel that she was in the wrong. I don't think that Oscar is even aware that he does this. And the sad thing is that I believe he really loved her and that’s partly why he’s emotional now. He’s crying because he feels guilty.

Thokozile Masipa

The Judge – Thokozile Masipa

The judge is pretty laidback, usually only rousing herself to check what the time is before an adjournment. You’d think they could put a clock in the courtroom. She’s been a little more proactive of late, telling someone off for not turning off their phone – cue some silly sniggering from people who should know better. But recently, she’s reprimanded Nel for calling Oscar a liar although his whole case is predicated on that fact. Unfortunately, Nel has yet to make his case, which we presume involves the couple arguing, Oscar losing his rag and eventually gunning his girlfriend down. In English courts, the attorney can and often does say ‘I put it to you that you’re lying’, etc. But what worried me is that the judge might believe that no one lies on the witness stand. If so, we’re in trouble.

The Victim – Reeva Steenkamp 

It seems that no one is speaking for Reeva. It’s impossible to imagine how terrified she must have been, how much she suffered, how she was gunned down and how savage and brutal her death was. Whenever I even try to contemplate it, I start to cry. When I hear Oscar say he was not the type to cower or run away, he knows that this is what he made her do. She was trusting, straightforward and good-natured and she tried to find the good in him. She had so much to live for. Rest in Peace, Reeva.

Reeva Steenkamp, RIP